Chin Up
by nimmieamee
Summary: Minific. Romance of the Auror and the Unlucky Woman.


Gawain Robards, the Auror, met Adfaer on a sad and grey Tuesday during the First War, and at the time she had very little — just a battered old trunk, really — and she was living then with Enoch Smith.

They had a curious existence. Neither she nor Smith liked Muggles themselves, but Muggles' _things_, bright fabrics, screens crackling with static, funny jumpers for the dog, these all captivated Adfaer. And since they captivated Adfaer, Smith gave them to her, for Adfaer had lived a sad and lonely existence, away from her family, grieving for a lost love, missing her second husband (taken by the Death Eaters, no doubt), raising a child on her own. But Robards could see that Smith adored her, and he couldn't blame Smith, for Adfaer was as funny and honest as she was beautiful.

"I couldn't stand to live side by side with Muggles myself," she told Smith, "But we've snatched up all their inventions and made them a little better, and, by Morgana, you can't blame us for it. We should use anything we can to get ahead, I always say. Stuff it in the trunk, and use it when it's necessary."

Adfaer's disposition was calm and often sunny, honest even in her most blatant moments of calculation, and above all: hopeful. But her life! It gave Robards such pain to watch it develop. Her circumstances became sadder and sadder with every passing year.

When Rupert Nonce's body was discovered, Adfaer came to the Auror office to identify it, and Robards was charmed by her stiff upper lip, her gentle sadness, her beautiful way of lifting back the sheet and fearlessly naming the corpse, then taking it home herself, like a loyal wife should. And when Enoch had a bad reaction to some medicine Healer Strout at St. Mungos had given him, Adfaer was there, nursing him back to health, bravely naming the culprit, filling out the eventual death forms, and enduring the silly hatreds of Smith's family, who resented that he had left such a massive fortune to such a very foreign girl.

"Her name isn't even Adfaer, the little cheat," said Auror Proudfoot, who was linked to the Smiths by marriage and therefore biased. "It's one of those virtue names so popular in the American South, or I think in the West Indies…"

"I shouldn't be surprised," Robards said, affronted on Adfaer's behalf. Proudfoot thought he knew Adfaer, but of course he didn't know her at all. He didn't know her like Robards knew her. "Being named for virtue would suit Adfaer beautifully!"

For Adfaer was virtuous, and besides this she was terribly wise. She'd learned the secrets of mediwizardry from her first husband, the black-eyed doctor and gentleman of letters that Robards knew she longed for, in her heart. And she'd learned wonderful charmswork from her second. From Smith, she took up tinkering with and improving (in a licensed fashion, of course) standard spells and mundane objects. And when she met Henry Cannis, the Animagus, she learned from him, as well. For it wasn't Adfaer's beauty that drew people in, but her willingness to listen to them, to let them instruct and guide her.

Adfaer learned something, gained something, from everyone. She could sing, dance, write sonnets, swim like a mermaid, tell wild stories of Mojisola the shark and other mythical witches of the West, arrange flowers, duel, do acrostics, do gymnastics, cook, recite the names of every country South of the Equator, sketch out a map of Mogadishu, speak Gobbledegook; and even coax flowers into growing, using glorious herbological secrets she'd developed while living with Smith.

Robards wished he had something to teach her. When Berenger Borgin was killed in a broomstick accident, he went to see her even though Proudfoot had the case, and sat with her and held her, brought her little boy a lolly, and wiped away her tears. But there weren't many tears, truth be told, for Adfaer was strong, not soppy. Courage and survival, those great Auror traits, had resided within her since birth. She did not need to learn them from Robards. She had no use for him. Robards knew this. It filled him with sadness.

Still, he tried to protect her from the small and petty hatreds of lesser men. Proudfoot wanted to question Adfaer, that summer Joseph Quirke drowned in the River Lyne while out with his stepson. Proudfoot said it was getting ridiculous, that Robards clearly had a blind spot, that the young boy's story was preposterous (Quirke had swum out to investigate what he believed was a shark. A shark! In the River Lyne!).

But Robards outranked Proudfoot, and so the investigation was shut down. They were always shut down, because Robards outranked almost everyone, and Robards very much loved Adfaer.

Robards was demoted, after the second war. This meant he had less to offer her now. He despaired at the thought. But he could not lie to her — Adfaer never lied to _him_ — and so he went to her sunny townhouse (inherited from Nonce), feeling the fool, for Adfaer never involved herself in politics and so was largely untouched by both wars. She was like a divine higher being, marked by special foresight and great wisdom, existing far above the affairs of men.

But Adfaer, sunny Adfaer, clever Adfaer — she refused to hold his demotion against him. She had her son bring him some calming elf-made wine, and held Robards' hand as he had always held hers. And within the year they were married.

Within two years Robards caught the dragon pox and died. People felt sorry for Adfaer, they really did. Adfaer was not to live a happy life, said Mrs. Parkinson solemnly over tea. No, no, just a profitable one, was the rejoinder from Mrs. Malfoy.

Robards did not leave behind much of a fortune. This stumped Proudfoot, who had been building a case for some time, as it did not fit the pattern. He questioned Adfaer's son, but the boy displayed a stunning knowledge of the relevant laws and MLE techniques, and left Proudfoot with even less of a case than before. Even giving the boy Veritaserum had no effect; he would not say his mother did it.

"Robards is dead! He's gone!" thundered Proudfoot.

"I don't know about that. Have you found the body?"

"I ask the questions here. She trapped him, didn't she?"

"Define trap."

"She fed him lies!"

"Certainly not. She was honest with him about every aspect of herself."

"How did she kill him?" screamed Proudfoot.

"I don't know that she did. But if you knew where he was, you might be able to find him and ask him."

All the other Aurors laughed at Proudfoot, then. One of them was so charmed that she even gave Blaise a lift home. He went direct to the trunk when he got there. He lifted the lid.

"Thanks terribly," he told the head of Gawain Robards, with little emotion. "It went just as you said it would, the interrogation."

"Your charmswork, my boy!" said the head of Nonce. "You must practice your charmswork!"

"Never let a man cheat you, son," said Borgin.

"I certainly won't," Blaise told them all kindly. He patted one of the heads, the way one would a dog. Then he locked the trunk again.

He was a boy with a hopeful disposition and a great deal of luck. The luck was in his mother's vaults, and also in the trunk. She believed in storing up any small bit of wealth and fortune one could — gold or learning, magic or minds, it didn't matter what. Anything that might help you, in trying times.

She'd lived through terrible things, she told her son. Their whole family had, across multiple continents, and throughout many centuries. People were so small-minded, they were apt to form so many backwards and silly ideas about you, to demonize or idolize you, as if they really knew you.

They always thought they knew you.

But you had to keep going. Chin up. Reinvent yourself. Be hopeful. Find a new name if you had to. It could be whatever you liked. It could be funny and honest; if you were honest, then the silly sods could hardly complain, when the other shoe fell.

Adfaer. The path to the funeral pile.

* * *

originally posted on my tumblr, livesandliesofwizards.


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